Sorrowless Field
by Kitty Ryan
Summary: In New Hope--after the war and during the reconstruction--Kel has a moment of whimsy that eats into Neal's mind, even after random tragedy. Kel/Neal, Neal/Yuki -- for Goldenlake and the SMACKDOWN
1. Chapter 1

**Sorrowless Field**

_K. Ryan

* * *

_

_I dreamt last night/of a Sorrowlessfield/unburdened by destiny's shadow_ Karine Polwart

* * *

New Hope

He caught her toying with the harvest, corn silk clinging to breeches and boots and sensible cuffs, framing her hair.

"Well, this is an unexpected moment of whimsy from our Commander."

"Hush, Neal."

"That was half-hearted, dearest."

"I am _enjoying _myself." Kel lobbed an ear at him, rolling her eyes as he clutched it, doomed, to his chest. This is wonderful. Produce _is _wonderful, and this is _ours_."

"Never have I met a woman so utterly diabolical about vegetables." He sat down in the golden-green, faintly crunchy midst of things, making a face as his tunic caught the stuff. "Is it just because it's all in Goldenlake colours?"

Not quite a smile. "I'd never noticed."

"That, Keladry, is because you are all _produce _and all poetry."

"We all have to eat." Kel did smile, slow and reflective, pushing hair behind her ears. "And I haven't seen a poem from you in years."

"I keep paeans to my wife's glorious eyebrows strictly private."

"Ah."

"Though," Neal shrugged. "I'm not sure if it _is _a paean, if it's limited to seventeen syllables—"

"—my goodness. You can learn." Kel caught the ear he threw at her head.

"You are cruel to me in your strange moment of respite."

Kel shrugged. "As Dom says, you're an easy mark. And I'll be up soon. It's just…"

Neal watched her face. _Seeing _Kel feel was not, actually, rare to him. He was good at languages. Grasping each minute reaction—the slow withdrawal of something bright and essential through anger or sadness; a slow blink for fear, a caught breath for frustration or excitement that would have him tearing at his hear and going about the world in circles, or catching each eyelid smile—had been a well-learned language, more useful than Old Thak. But sometimes, watching Kel—watching her face and words try to line up into something felt outside of body or country or custom—made Neal feel as if he was witnessing the rebirth of emotions, before they were pinned into shapes and words and _sentiment_. Now, he was seeing shy pride in all its new splendour.

"We all planted this," she said, taking his hands in hers. "We all _worked_. It's been more than a year, and now—"

"—we're producing."

"My people are _safe_," said Kel, turning a husk over in weathered hands. "It's a sorrowless field."

"That, my non-poet," said Neal, leaning forward to pluck fibres from her hair, "Was strangely beautiful. Are you _blushing?_"

Kel cleared her throat. "Sorrowless field," she muttered. "Foolish notion."

"No," he said. "Not at all."

Kel stood, and Neal eyed her from the floor, and, not for the first time, laughed at himself for his arrogance in thinking he could ever truly read her face.

"Clerks and babies and real life await," she said. "I'll see you at dinner."


	2. Chapter 2

**Sorrowless Field**

_K. Ryan

* * *

_

_"I dreamt [dreamed? imperfect?] last night  
of a sorrow less...[sorrow-less?]Sorrowlessfield..."

* * *

_

"Neal?"

The words were strange, spaces dissolving in his mind until he had odd backformations and leaps of line. He tasted shapes, heard colours, felt the ridge and swell of harveststore against his hands like a blind man's letters. _Foolish notion_—

"Nealan!"

He was clearly up too late. "Yes, Yukimi?"

She laughed, softly. "You know, it is still impossible to address you by your full name with a straight face."

"So says the _Yamani_—"

"—Bad jokes make me tired, and I want to stay awake." Neal turned at the feel of her hands on his shoulders, then slow warm in his hair. Yuki tugged slightly as he faced her.

"What are you doing?"

"Writing."

He strained to kiss her, her hands tightened, then relaxed. "_Uh_-oh."

"What sort of delightful, supportive wife are you?"

Another kiss. "_Yours_."

"Good." Another kiss. "A very good—uh—point."

"What _were _you writing?"

"You really want to know?"

Yuki shifted, easing into his chair across his legs, her light cotton nightdress sneaking up her thighs in a way that made Neal think upon a very _different _kind of poetry, generally locked up.

"I want to know if I should kiss you again, or hit you."

Neal laughed, hands moving to her hips. "You _know _I'm amenable to both."

"I am a delightful, supportive wife."

Neal cleared his throat. "It's…it's nothing, really. At least, I'm too stupid for it to anything _except_ nothing. Kel just said something to me, today, about life here—"

"—this ramshackle outpost—"

"—this _very _ramshackle outpost, and it made me think"

"Uh-oh."

"I'm serious, Yuki!"

She kissed him. Kissed him slow, and rich, and deep. "I know. You're just easy to tease."

"She said something…" he cupped Yuki's face gently, searching. "Sometimes I wonder about our Kel," he said. "My friend and yours, oldest and best, and yet—"

"—there is no _knowing_ another person."

This. This, another reason to add to the endless list of why he loved her. "Exactly." He swallowed. "But it's still a little unsettling to see her taking healing, finally, that I didn't know she needed."


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorrowless Field**

_K. Ryan

* * *

_

_"And then you parted from me  
Where the road splits in three  
And all of these roads were for the taking..."

* * *

_

"_Kel_."

Neal, used to unflattering description, felt it had reached a peak with Alanna. One look at him in his father's office, and she'd said—and, Gods, she had said it _calmly_, so he'd found out not too much later— that he was, "A long streak of not-so-much," who probably doubled any salute he might have to give as a means of fixing his hair.

Still, long and streaky or otherwise, he had a good yell in him.

"_**Kel**adry_."

Kel turned, laughing. "That was uncivilised of you."

"You're the one dragging me out into a field!"

As he tramped towards her, the hands she held above her head loomed larger and more dust streaked. "I'm not dragging you anywhere."

"Don't be obtuse, Mindelan."

"I told you, I just had to see to a few things—"

"—Kel, you're mending _fences_." He had reached her. It was near dusk, and light was sheeting around them in the sort of yellow-copper that tinged everything it touched, enriching it; turning grass or boot leather or clouds into new kinds of metal. He curled his hand around the post, tugging it.

"Don't!"

"There is a whole roster of people who mend fences," he told her, smiling despite himself. "And I _know_, before you say it, sweet: you just 'put yourself on the damn roster'. But these other fine people have something that you do not."

The Lady Knight of Mindelan, Commander of New Hope, went very still. "Neal, if you talk about noble privilege you are not going to be able to sit down for a _month_. Two months."

"You have the grit, the determination, a certain _gravitas_ with a shovel—"

"—I'll leave your hands unbruised—"

"—an overall willingness to haul—"

"—But only because we need them—"

"—but they have—"

"Out with it, Neal!"

"—_Carpentry._"

Silence. Her hand, slowly covering his own and squeezing.

"You are in trouble."

They both laughed, hard, and Neal hugged her. She was leaning into his shoulder; her hair, short and soft, tickled his ear and the back of his neck. "I know," he said, when he could. "But so are you. When _you_ order me to go over every single resident—"

"—Neal, I'm _fine_—"

"—you _embody_ every single resident. It's unsettling. Do I have to whack you with Yuki's fan?"

"You know what she says about playing with grown-up toys. And I'll embody nothing of the kind."

She was smiling at him. A full smile, exasperated, far enough away from him now to loom slightly, his hands firmly grasping her forearms in a grip he would even give her three seconds to break.

It was, he thought rather crazily, _something_, that her noise was still unbroken. What that something was, he had no idea.

_Foolish notion._

Green light bloomed palely at his fingertips, and Kel jumped.

"Since," he murmured, steady, "You've made me come all the way out here, calling you like a shepherdess--don't refuse the healer, Kel."

"I wish," said Kel, very soft, "You didn't know that story."

"It's a good story." Magic ghosted across her skin as he ran one hand lightly over her upper arm, her shoulder. He knelt, eyes half closed, slipping both hands cleanly, carefully, over her waist and hips, easing an ache in the left one, bringing out a bruise on her right thigh so it would no longer hide and build itself into pain. Quick, experienced touches to knees and ankles, the feet that bore her and everything in her besides.

"There," he said, rising and smiling as Kel grasped his shoulders to haul him to his feet. "Nothing wrong so far."

"Neal. Are you…?"

He cupped her face, feeling the long, strong bones under his hands, one of them travelling back slowly to rest at the back of her skull. The light sank into her skin, gilding and greening her. "Yes?"

"You don't _have_ to touch me."

They both stood very still, and she was right.

His eyes opened, and he nodded, swallowing, feeling the sudden contained rush of blood under his hand and her cheek. With one finger, before stepping away, he traced the delicate, unbroken line of her nose, and that made her laugh.

"You're mad. And that tickles."

"I…I wanted to." He grinned, backing another step and leaning against the dilapidated fence. "And you're all set."

"For what?"

"Just…set."

Kel looked at him, and her smile was not one he had seen before. "You're still mad," she said.

And then she walked away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sorrowless Field**

_K. Ryan

* * *

"I dreamt last night  
of__ a Sorrowlessfield  
I saw you..."

* * *

_

Her hand was surprising, quick and hard and rain-cold against his wrist. She held it up, curious and squinting and familiar with his body and impossible handwriting. "You're writing your love letters on your body now?" She eyed him, very dry.

"Such a great and terrible romantic."

"Unhand me, Lump!"

"In my own good time," Kel muttered, still squinting. "You're missing a space, you know. Several spaces?"

"It works better that way. I've always written on my hands, Kel. I was Master Oakbridge's blue-tinged despair…"

Kel laughed. "Come to dinner. Your patients are sleeping."

"Only if you get out of those wet things."

"I as on my way—"

"—to dinner, in a sodden jerkin. Honestly, Kel. You'll have to peel out of that. And listen to me, sounding like The Lioness with her grownup babies."

Kel shook her head. "I don't know what's come over you lately—"

"—It's not a love poem."

"Excuse me?"

Neal shifted, examining the blurred, leaking words sprawled across the pale skin of his forearm. "This. It's not a love-anything. It's just _something_. You said something the other week, and it made me—"

"—Neal," said Kel. "If anyone had told me at thirteen I'd be the cause of your poetry, I would have gladly kissed My Lord Wyldon, danced up the Needle, and turned a cartwheel As it is now," she shrugged, grinning. "You ought just come to dinner. Vegetables seem vital for any creative process. They're good for the bowels."

Neal spluttered. "Did you just imply I produce _shi_—"

"--I am the still silence of a pond after new snow," said Kel, laughter darkening the edges of her words with extra pressure. "I imply nothing. I am simply here."

Still spluttering, he felt her fingers move lightly through his hair before she turned, and left him for the kitchens, leaving puddles in her wake.


	5. Chapter 5

**Sorrowless Field**

_K. Ryan

* * *

_

"Queenscove..."

"Don't you go near him!"

Yuki stood at the door, resolute, lip bitten raw but held firm, now, against rain and weeping and Lord Raoul, who loomed her like broken stone, jagged and falling urgently forward.

Seeing his shadow on her face, Raoul swallowed. "My lady," he said, words thick and soft and strange. "Forgive me, but it's been three days, and we can't keep—"

If no one said the words, they could not be true. "He should see her."

"He sees," she said, bowing her tears into a clean line, a shape; something she could hold. "But he cannot do this thing."

* * *

_I dreamt last night  
of a Sorrowlessfield  
You stood under—_

* * *

"--A tree," said Wyldon, leaden.

"Yes, My Lord." The rain was hard against the window, and Merric shivered. He was too big for his skin, too small for the room, with Wyldon here. It was his office, and yet with Wyldon here his world was reversed into a stuttering eleven-year-old denied free days for a month. "She was—"

Lord Wyldon of Cavall's mouth tightened, and he closed his eyes. Just once, but slowly, heavily, and Merric was jolted into his own world again, where was rain and he had people, an explanations that fit like too-small-skin over broken, alien bones.

"She was testing herself."

Merric slammed his fist on the desk. "No," he said, ragged. "There was no test. This was just _random_, my lord. She was there, and she was joking with Jacut, and she just slipped and—"

"Get a-hold of yourself, Merric of Hollyrose." The words and response were reflexive. Indrawn breaths, stilling faces. Lord Wyldon waited.

"Tobe found Neal," the younger man whispered, eyes stark in his face. "But by the time he got there—the _sound_, My Lord."

Wyldon's hands clenched.

"The sound," said Merric. "I heard it. I swear so. Just…snap. She fell, and—

* * *

_Through the rattle and rain,  
To the window you came  
Where I lay silently sleeping…_

* * *

The world was wrong. Yuki, kneeling by her own closed door, felt it shift in and out, large to small, lightness lurching drunkenly, commonly, into lead weight and back again. Fragments of words ill-fitting, shallow breaths half drawn. She could hear each scratch of his pen—could see the feathers bent and stained even with her eyes closed and a door between them.

Yuki knelt, and tried to breathe. She tried to look, her eyes still closed, her friend laid out rooms away. She tried to look back to where she had not been. To the place where things changed. Where there had, apparently, been a sound to break he ordinariness of everything.

People fell, after all, all the time.

* * *

_I dreamt last night of a Sorrowlessfield  
And woke to the sound of weeping_


	6. Chapter 6

**Sorrowless Field**

_K. Ryan

* * *

_

"I won't make him leave, Lady."

Tobe was careful not to touch Yuki; careful not to be touched. He stood, shivering, his light hair crackling around his face.

"I thought you would be with—"

"—Don't mean to interrupt, Lady, but she left me and she didn't even mean to. And Queenscove fixed me more than once." He swallowed, suddenly, eyes filling. Yuki looked down and he looked away. "_I_ don't mean, I mean," he said thickly. "I have proper words now, and if I'd just gotten there _sooner_, not now, I mean, but then—"

"—You won't make him leave, Tobeis Boon?"

"I promise."

Each was careful not to meet the other's eyes as Tobe stepped past her into the room she and her husband shared.

* * *

I dreamt last night of a Sorrowlessfield_  
We lay all day in the meadow  
I dreamt last night of a Sorrowlessfield  
Unburdened by destiny's shadow

* * *

_"Sir Nealan?"

The knight faced a monolith. Paper loomed before and on either side of him, mute and unrelenting, filthy and stained. Floorboards creaked under Tobe's weight as he approached the desk, careful to leave a clear path to Yuki and the door.

"Neal?"

"Why…" this was not the drawl Tobe remembered from the lean young man who had condemned the lice in his hair, and confirmed that food was somewhat necessary to life. This was a stuck voice, still shuddering with the single scream from before, when he had seen her body. It had been just a body, by then, with sticks and mud and not even the faintest expression of surprise.

"Why did you leave her? How could _you_."

Tobe shivered. "I just told your lady wife," he said, attempting some of his mistress's living stillness. "She left me first, and this…" he swallowed. "This isn't something I can stow away on. You, though—"

"—I need to finish this."

Tobe sat by Neal's desk, spine pressed into the edge of one of its solid, dark legs. The elegant sort of solid that had taken weeks to transport, with lots of shouting.

"You just go ahead and finish it," he said. "You finish, you remember, and Lady Yukimi'll keep the lords and that lot out. She's fierce."

"I love her." Sudden words, over the top of Tobe's, and livid with that old scream.

"I think she knows that, right enough."

"I _miss_ so much."

"And you'll miss more, sir. You know…" Tobe shifted. This felt a confidence betrayed, somehow, or at least not the thing that young men of substance discussed with older sorts, or even amongst themselves. But the world, after all, had gone mad. Tobe knew _he_ should be madder, himself. Something was waiting for him, and it had teeth worse than metal monsters or even the sight of Meech's old doll, alone and bald from waiting and fear. It was big, and he was angry—so very angry. But whatever it was, it wasn't waiting for him in the room where Kel lay, where there was always some gawker in the doorway or weeper over hands that did not feel. Besides, Jump was there, and Tobe trusted him to bite anyone with incense.

Neal of Queenscove looked like Tobe felt, and Neal had fixed him up, once or twice.

"What, Tobe? I don't know anything."

"I know she was happy when she came back to her rooms that morning. She went out dawn-like, to check on everyone like she always di—does. She checked, and she came back the way she sometimes can, all long and loose and not smiling so much as _being_, you know?"

"How do _you_ know?"

"Just do, sir. She came back, and she said you were sweet. To herself, of course, but I still heard. So sweet, she said." _Enough to make giddiness_—she'd said that, too, but Neal was already crying, raw and stifled like there was stuff in his throat, and Tobe suddenly knew he did need all those words.

"You just finish what you're doing, sir. I'll stay right here."

* * *

I surrendered my skin_  
Until evening came in…  
Upon every joy of creation  
I dreamed last night of a Sorrowlessfield  
And woke to a lamentation_

* * *

["You know Merric gets tetchy when you go on patrol."

"Merric," Kel murmured, "Is a naturally tetchy person."

She had stood behind him at the rosters before dawn, a solid, warm presence just shy of his skin. The rain had not stopped. It was going to be a grey and miserable day; the sort where Yuki longed for softer heat and a cold that, she insisted, was clean.

Kel felt clean, and warm, and Neal had scowled, turning to face her.

"The point of making an example," she said to the scowl, "Is _maintaining_ it."

"Your philosophy is nothing if not consistent." Neal felt a smile, tired as he was, slowly tug at the corner of his mouth.

Kel laughed, hands falling to his shoulders. "That is what I just said."

Neal, as he'd looked at her, thought of all the emotions he'd seen born and reborn in her face.  
_  
Foolish notion._

"What is it?"

"_You_," he told her. "I don't think I'll ever know what you're thinking. You just showed me what exasperation really looks like."

"And to think everyone once said they wanted to punch you just for saying hello."

"You heard that one?"

"Neal." Her hands were still there, bracing. "I helped _start_ it."

The kiss, when it came, was easy to slip, the tilt of his head dragging her lips softly across his cheek to the corner of her mouth, and then, with their shared gasp, briefly against it. Barely a touch, awkward and breathless and soon dissipated in the air of the damp, empty corridor.

"Safe patrol, Lady Knight."

"That doesn't—"

"—Never, sweet. I just…learned a little more of you, is all."

Kel laughed, pulling away. "Please, _please_ don't write three scrolls on your findings."

"I won't." His answering grin had been shaky. "But I'll probably over think things."

"I'll see you at dinner."]

* * *

_I dreamt last night of a Sorrowlessfield  
The only one left without sorrow  
I dreamt last night of a Sorrowlessfield  
And you said you would see me tomorrow  
And then you parted from me, where the road splits in three  
All of those roads were for the taking…

* * *

_

"Here," said Neal, at last. "Keep this. Do what you like with it."

A thin scroll, raggedly cut and sewn, ink bleeding all over the place. "You want me to _read_ it?"

Neal's laugh surprised both of them. "Not so sure my poetry's a fit part of your education, Tobe. The meter's all over the place. Not classical at all. There's no _scanning_ it."

"Sir?"

"Tobe?"

"You're babbling, sir. Just a little. And it's all right to babble, I reckon, right now, but you're also standing, and this is making me a mite nervous.

"I'm finished. I need to see. I need to hold my wife. I need to break things. I need to let Raoul hit me and I need to find my father and I think I heard Lady Alanna out there and I need to _see_—"

"—I think you're meant to do things one at a time, sir."

"I'm _finished_, Tobe."

"No," said the boy, looking up, guarding himself. "She is."

* * *

_I dreamed last night of a Sorrowlessfield  
And woke to the sound of my own heart breaking_


	7. Epilogue

**Sorrowless Field**

_K. Ryan

* * *

_

Epilogue

* * *

"I'll see you at dinner."

She turned. She stooped. Another turn to face him. "Neal, I'm _sorry_, but—"

"Kel?"

She looked at him, searching, and Neal felt himself flush, as if blood was somehow being drawn up in a direct line from his spine to his face.

"I'm going to kiss you again," she said, very faint. "Just once. But properly. After all this time, I deserve _properly_."

A step forward. Her face. It was impossible to look away from her face, as flushed as his, both crowded and still. "Kel," he said. He was hoarse.

She was touching him. Her hand over his face, his nose. Her thumb traced his lower lip, the sharp point of one cheek. His hairline, with special gentleness.

His own hand on her skin. A line of freckles under one eye. Her eyebrow and jaw, finely drawn. Her neck, and the fine muscles to her shoulder.

His throat, The softness there sharply different from the rough textures of his cheek in the early morning. The faint, smiling lines around his nose and eyes.

"Neal."

"Kel."

Her name and his, and her lips. His beneath, and prepared. Her tongue brushing his and a shared whisper of laughter. The tilt of her face to his—and their arms: fast around each other. Hard and soft and endless-brief in dull morning light.

* * *

_I dreamt last night..._

_

* * *

_

_**A/N: **_This mini-series is dedicated to everyone who competed so beauifully in rounds 1/C (Raoul v. Neal) and 1/F (Vania v. Lalasa) in Goldenlake's SMACKDOWN. (.). There is some wonderful fic to read, there.

Also, Neal's 'poem' is not mine. It is a wonderful song by Karine Polwart that I have cruelly shackled for my own not-for-profit ends. Listen to it here, if you're interested: (.com/watch?v=GQ1nJNUyH-E)


End file.
